Sense8
Two minutes of documentary footage from eight cities — festivals, protests, traffic, dancing — cut so fast the places stop being separable. The longest opening on this site, and it earns it.
Sense8 kept one opening title sequence, 120 seconds long, across seasons 1–2.
At 120 seconds, it opens well above the 58-second median for sci-fi sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on Netflix in 2015, when Mystery Science Theater 3000, Arrested Development and Top Boy were also on the network.
The opening titles
Seasons 1–2
120sReal footage shot in each of the show's cities rather than anything staged.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 2010s
1 sequence
Stranger Things
Red letters assembling out of the dark in ITC Benguiat, glowing at the edges like a paperback cover left in the sun. An argument that a title sequence can be nothing but type and still do all the work.
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1 sequence
3%
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1 sequence
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Archive footage of the space race, doctored — real newsreel edited so that the alternate history it depicts appears to have actually been filmed.
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- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
1 sequenceThe Man in the High Castle
Dick's occupied America, opened by newsreel light thrown across a map that has the wrong flags on it.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Black Mirror
A screen cracking, and that is the whole thing. Eighteen seconds of glitch and a fracture spreading across black glass — an anthology refusing to introduce anything, because each episode is a different show.
- Seasons 1–7